


to noise making

by geniewish



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Changhyuk, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, Humor, M/M, Piercings, Smut, Tattoos, ambiguous modern british tv romcom, and guitarist changkyun, guitarist minhyuk, hyungheonho as That One Friend, minor hyungki if u squint, or simply a romcon about changkyun being a bastard and minhyuk falling for him unwillingly, theres one eboy and its changkyun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 22:43:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20590328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geniewish/pseuds/geniewish
Summary: Kihyun is gone, the band is in ruins, Hyungwon finishes his fifth cup of coffee, Jooheon cracks yet another drumstick in half, and all Minhyuk wants to do is perform that one Nancy Sinatra song he bopped to as a kid. The world seems to come crumbling down when he realises that the fate of his band––his pride, his home––is in the small knuckly hands of a short, cocky, fully tattooed, emo-looking wannabe eboy that has his star sign inked on his fingers and smiles like he knows Minhyuk will end up falling for him.Too bad that Minhyuk also realises that that funky-punky bastard is not actually as cool he seems on Instagram pictures. And with a deep resigned sigh, falls for him anyways.





	to noise making

**Author's Note:**

> hi guys, so i wrote this in like a few days bc i really wanted a tattooed changhyuk and also tongue piercings so i delivered for myself.  
the idea with this particular lineup of the band (and generally punk looking mx) is actually taken from my own fic [summer, sex and rock n roll](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16045844/chapters/37458692)  
except i switched around ki and kyun. these are fully separate works but in case someone thinks it sounds familiar - yeah ive written something similar already ahdgjdf
> 
> this is honestly just supposed to be a little crack ish oneshot so i hope you find it funny teary eyed emoji
> 
> the title is taken from hozier - to noise making (sing)! not inspired by the song but i think the lyrics are relevant to musical shenanigans the boys do here
> 
> hope you enjoy!

“Kinda short. Well-built though. Massive sneakers, hu-u-u-uge, the size of his head almost, if not bigger. Kinda has this look in his eyes, like, he’s not too happy to meet you but he will do his best to tolerate you and, like, not show his irritation. Fails every single time, if I’m honest, I’ve only seen him from afar and he gives me chills, no kidding, the bloke’s a mugger. What else. Well, he’s got a nose––oi, I know we all got them, but his is, like, big, it’s an attack nose, if Kihyun’s got a dagger nose, this dude’s got a tank nose. It’s kinda cute though. Mm, always wears caps. Oh, and yeah, tattoos, lots of tattoos, he likes them even more than Minhyuk. Yup, that’s about it.” Hoseok nods and bites half of the soggy chip in his hand. 

Minhyuk pitifully chews on his own. “That’s it? Short, big nose, lots of tattoos? That’s the guy I’m looking for?”

Hoseok wipes his hands off a wrinkly napkin and reaches for his half-eaten burger. “Uh-huh,” he says with Whopper mush in his mouth and chaws. 

“I think he’s chill,” Jooheon joins, reaching over the table for a forgotten nugget. “Saw him in a campus shop once, someone asked if he was the last in the queue and he said ‘yeah’ with, like, a smile of some sort.”

“Lowkey terrifying though,” Hyunwoo utters between munches, before scrunching his face and taking an enormous bite off his burger. Minhyuk looks at him, waiting for an explanation. Hyunwoo tosses around a mix of bread and meat in his mouth, stares at his teethbites on the cooked food flesh, frowns and then registers the sudden silence. “I mean, he’s up to my chest but sounds like my two-metre-tall gym instructor.” He chews some more. “Not that height has any relevance to vocal chords whatsoever.”

“I think it does, I mean, titans have low voices, right?” Jooheon grimaces like he’s solving a math equation. “You know that really-really short lady? The one famous for being small? I think she sounds like a toddler.”

“Minhyuk’s tall and sounds like a toddler,” Hoseok remarks and releases a low titter when Minhyuk gathers a handful of cold fries and pretends to aim them right at him.

“He’s not that tall,” Jooheon keeps grimacing.

“If any of us sounds like a toddler, then it’s you, hun,” Minhyuk says, wiping his mouth with a napkin. The other guy’s eyes immediately widen and his lips go slack in an offended ‘hey!’. “See,” Minhyuk lets a teasing smile stretch in the corners, and Hoseok releases another offhand chortle. 

Then a bulb lights above Jooheon’s head, and he straightens with a bounce, like a slinky. “Wait, so that guitar guy looks like a toddler but doesn’t sound like one?”

Hoseok rolls his eyes as his jaws and cheeks keep moving rapidly around the burger. “He’sh co’ered in chachs, hun.”

“You ever seen a toddler with full sleeves?” Hyunwoo nods his brows at Jooheon, who inhales like all the desperation of the world has finally caught up with him.

“That’s why I need a break, you,” he twitches one corner of his upper lip as he thinks of a right word, “absolute heathens.”

Minhyuk sighs and curves his eyebrows. “You can’t, hun, you’re the only drummer we have.”

Jooheon looks offended again. “And Kihyun’s the only skilled vocalist we have! But he’s allowed to go back north and I’m not.”

“You’re from the south,” Hyunwoo notes, and now both Hoseok and Jooheon roll their eyes.

Minhyuk’s right eye twitches in realisation. “Where’s that guy from then?”

“Belfast,” Hoseok replies. It seems like he’s been chewing forever.

“Thank god,” Minhyuk exhales, “I would not tolerate another Scot in the band.” He puts one elbow on the table and props his head against two stretched fingers.

“You haven’t even asked him yet, maybe he’s not interested,” Hoseok remarks, yet again, for no reason whatsoever.

“‘Course he’s not interested yet, I haven’t even asked him!” Minhyuk brings his eyes to the ceiling and tries to find inner peace, the one he’s never really strived for anyway.

Hyunwoo looks at him and keeps chewing. “That’s exactly what Hoseok said.”

Minhyuk drops his head on the table with a hollow thud.

Kinda short, big nose, even bigger shoes, a black cap, tattoos. Minhyuk looks over the unfashionable smoking punk by the neighbouring set of benches and nods to himself. Fully clad in black like an angel of death and tinder heartbreak. Seems about right. 

Hyungwon loudly sips the remains of iced Americano by his side, huge cartoon eyes absently gawking into the distance.

Minhyuk waits for the indirectly acquainted guy to stray away from his extensive group of friends to catch him and interrogate him. It has to be quick and sharp, straight and forward, no catsy business, no puppy situations, just Minhyuk, his broken rock band and a potential guitarist-slash-singer to substitute their temporary missing component. 

What Minhyuk is saying, he shouldn’t be a pussy and just talk to the guy like punk to punk. 

Not a second later, the wannabe eboy laughs and steps away from his cackling bunch, gesturing with an empty can of coke. Minhyuk springs up from his bench and rushes towards the tall rubbish bin where the target guy is headed. 

By the time he throws the can away, unsuspecting of everything, Minhyuk materialises right in front of him like an essay deadline. The big nose guy jerks a little in surprise but doesn’t seem unpleasantly hostile. It’s Minhyuk who’s pleasantly taken aback—none of his friends mentioned the face piercings. And he isn’t even that short either––they’re almost at eye level, really, if Minhyuk cranes his neck and the other guy stretches it upwards like a turtle. Or maybe it’s just the massive, massive trainers with massive insoles. 

“Hey! Dan, right?” Minhyuk breathes out, as if he’s been chasing the other guy for days on end and saying his greeting had been his most ambitious plan of the decade. His cap is boldly saying ‘no heaven on earth’ white on black; his massive t-shirt looks like it’s seen generations of wars; the wolf pendant around his neck definitely doesn’t have a secret meaning.

The Big Nose With a Nose Ring furrows his brows and twirls his hands in the air. “Changkyun, actually, that’s the name I go by,” he says without any malice and gives Minhyuk the kind of stare that prompts him to say whatever he was meant to say however he wants to say it. Simply speaking, he seems nice. And his voice is deep and round, like futuristic sun rays that envelop the entire planet in dark green cartoon flames. A nice voice, is what it means.

“Okay, hey, Changkyun, I’m Minhyuk,” he extends his hand, which the other guy takes (rather firmly––a sign of confidence) into his own tattooed palm and gives it a tiny squeeze. He stretches his lips in a polite smile and utters a ‘nice to meet you’. “Sorry for disturbing, I just really needed to ask something, I don’t know if you know but I think we have some mutual friends?”

“Okay,” Changkyun nods, and when he opens his mouth a tad bit wider, there’s something small and silver glowing in the depth of his mouth cavity. Minhyuk swallows and tries not to stare at the other’s lips. Half of his face is actually shaded by the cap, but Minhyuk can distinguish attentive gleam in his eyes and a little snake tattoo on his neck. Hyungwon has a similar one on his spine.

“Do you know Kihyun, by any chance?” Minhyuk tries although he already knows the answer––the two of them are acquainted, and a couple of baseless dialogues they shared seemed enough for Kihyun to advertise the guy as the third best guitarist in the area. Third best after Hyungwon and Minhyuk, of course.

“Oh, yeah, he lived in the next block in my accommodation last year.” Changkyun says casually, not a hint of timidness in front of the stranger. Minhyuk likes that. 

“Oh, that’s nice,” he returns politely and nods in acknowledgement of the said words. “So you do know that Kihyun has a rock band, sort of?”

“Yeah, heard of it, heard some good reviews. Never been to a single performance though.”

“Well, here’s a thing. I’m the bass player in his band,” Minhyuk starts and Changkyun mutters a quiet ‘oh, nice’ in reply, “I don’t know if you know,” he really needs to stop saying that, “but Kihyun is away now for a little while, so Rocksta X is missing a vocalist and another guitar player. And because Kihyun knows you, he recommended you as a potential frontman.”

Changkyun twitches the corners of his mouth down and raises his brows in quick contemplation. “If I’m honest, I’ve never been in a band before,” he confesses. 

“That’s fine,” Minhyuk offers smile, “we just need a frontman for the student festival, the one they’re holding in Green Park, then you can be free as a bird straight after. That is, of course, if you consider the offer.”

The other glances to the side, noting his friends’ curious looks in their direction. “Hey, how about I get back at you by the end of today? Give me your contact or something.” Changkyun whips his phone out of his pocket, and Minhyuk follows his actions.

“Sure, yeah. Instagram? Snapchat?” They exchange both just in case, then the shorter one pursues his lips in a flat polite smile that forces little dips of dimples on his cheeks. Dimplets. Tiny, adorable, round dimples. 

Minhyuk unconsciously does the same to flex his own.

“But, honestly, I wouldn’t mind performing,” Changkyun says, tone casual, like they’re discussing breakfast food and not the potential of the greatest students-ruled rock band in the entirety of modern Great Britain. “Send me some of the stuff you do, maybe?” He asks as he takes a step towards his benches.

“Yeah, will do!” Minhyuk does the same and raises his hand in a little wave. “See you later then?”

Changkyun nods a goodbye with the same dimpled smile, and Minhyuk thinks about the ridiculous A Q U A R I U S the guy has tattooed in Gothic Bold on his knuckles. He looks down at his own hands. Maybe his own H E L L B E N T in American Typewriter isn’t too clever either, but in his defense, he’d done it before that Doctor Who episode. 

“Talked to the guitar guy?” Hyungwon asks and shakes his empty plastic coffee cup, eyes flashing with a note of disappointment at the dull sound of ice cubes bumping against the walls. 

“Yeah, said he’s considering.” Minhyuk sits down and, just like Hyungwon, stares into the distance with nothing but Changkyun’s forest-covered forearms and a tongue piercing on his mind. 

“Heya?” Changkyun’s nose comes into the practice room first, and then the guy himself appears a second later, gingerly holding to the door he’s opened. He’s got a guitar case towering over his cap-clad head; a silver chain is dangling from the loopholes in his jeans; his hoodie says ‘I will eat you’. Minhyuk holds back a tiny-tiny smile, seeing as the little soft boy eventually took the offer after a few performance videos Minhyuk sent him. 

“Oh, hey, you must be Changkyun!” Jooheon, orange-haired and in massive camouflage trackies, gets up from his drum set and approaches the wary newcomer, who tentatively steps into the room. “I’m Jooheon, the leader, the drummer and the main composer.” He puts (slaps) an arm on Changkyun’s shoulder and leads him towards the rest of the guys. “Got any music-related queries, come to me.”

Hyungwon, who’s standing by the wall where they usually pile up all their shit, squints judgmentally. “I write too, you know,” he says blandly but walks up to the two anyways, his face immediately transforming into that of a polite boy. “I’m Hyungwon, lead guitar.” Changkyun takes the extended hand and squeezes it confidently. 

“You’ve met Minhyuk.” Jooheon nods in his direction, and Minhyuk almost hops and bounces to their little gang.

“Hey, really glad you accepted our offer!” He pats Changkyun on the shoulder, realising only a second later how awkward it actually looked from the side, and sways his hand around the practice room. “This is where we sit locked up for hours, so, yeah, feel at home.”

Changkyun smiles with a little exhale through his nose, and something in Minhyuk’s throat squirms. “Thank you,” Changkyun says and proceeds to shrug the guitar case off his shoulders. When he reaches for the straps, Minhyuk notices messily painted black nails, and the squirming moves down to his chest, enraging in its intensity. 

“Cutting straight to business,” Jooheon claps his hands and stomps to his drum set, “we haven’t actually decided what to perform yet, but we have jotted down a few options.”

Changkyun nods, listening carefully. “Okay.” Hyungwon takes his electric guitar (his name is Richard and he is a stunning black Ibanez Gio) and starts gently grooving to tunes in his head.

“Our set time is about ten minutes, so we can fit three songs,” Jooheon continues. “We gotta show diversity, so,” he hits the snare drum with a drumstick, “choice one is our original alternative rock song, not too hardcore and showy but something everyone can bop to.” He slams the drum again. “Second choice is something ridiculously popular that even uneducated chavs know,” he rolls his eyes back, thinking of examples, “take Green Day or, like, rock remix of Take Me to Church.”

“Hyungwon loves Hozier,” Minhyuk murmurs to Changkyun. The shorter nods.

“And our third and final applause-inducing song is,” Jooheon effortlessly plays a whole rhythm and then builds up the anticipation with a march tune. Hitting the cymbal, he sighs and curves his eyebrows. “Queen,” he says anticlimactically. 

Changkyun exhales like he has the toughest puzzle in the world lying right in front of him. “Queen is hard.”

Jooheon hits the snare again. “Yup.”

“Thing is,” Hyungwon steps in, “Kihyun sang them once and sang pretty well, so we wanna have a repeat of that brief moment of fame, but now that he’s gone and we don’t have an advanced piano player, we’re a little troubled.”

“You play the piano?” Jooheon asks.

Changkyun tilts his head to the side. “A little, not, like, superbly. Can probably play some simple tunes.”

“Let’s think of something else,” Jooheon says with another hit of the drum.

Minhyuk folds his arms across his chest and puckers his lips, and in the corner of his eye, he can see Changkyun turning to look at him. “Let’s do that Nancy Sinatra song I suggested last time.”

Changkyun’s eyebrows fly up into the roof his cap. “Nancy Sinatra? And you’re a rock band?” There’s a note of ridicule in his voice, like he expects the suggestion to be a joke.

Minhyuk frowns, terribly offended, and abruptly spins to leer at the shorter guy. “Oi, don’t diss Nancy Sinatra.”

The other only smiles, and his smile is so irritatingly amused it’s bordering on a nasty grin. “Aight, I see you're a wee bit fragile, but guess I’m up for whatever you guys play.”

Before Minhyuk’s palms can turns into fists, Jooheon taps the bass drum and throws one drumstick in the air, and when he catches it, sharply slams the cymbals. “Right, should we start warming up first?”

Hyungwon bops his head in tune to the rhythm only he can hear and drags a chair to sit down. It screeches against the linoleum, and Minhyuk feels a grey cloud gathering over his head. Changkyun starts unzipping his own guitar case, shadows of the nasty grin still lingering in the corners of his lips. 

When Minhyuk takes his bass and passes by the shorter guy to isolate himself in the other corner of the practice room for the sake of not spreading the rain cloud onto others, he gravely whispers into Changkyun’s personal space:

“One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.”

It’s a lame threat, but he’ll take it.

Minhyuk’s inner squirming resumes when Changkyun starts playing and singing, his short, knuckly, tattooed and yet elegant fingers skilfully moving up and down the frets, his deep raspy voice resonating in the room like thunder on a warm rainy day, his dark-clothed presence in the centre of the nominal stage like the only worthy piece of attraction in a room decorated with royal trinkets, his every bop of the head and tap of the foot rhythmic and fascinating, and Minhyuk can’t drag his eyes down at his own instrument. He’s the kind of guy who has a smile plastered all over his face if something makes him feel good, and his body would be a liar if it didn’t put a little smile on his face at this very moment. 

His inner squirming stops as abruptly as it began when Changkyun grimaces at yet another song suggestion, when he stands up and paces around like he owns the place, when he interrupts Hyungwon’s immaculate fingerpicking and strums something of his own (just as immaculate but different, absolutely not at all what they planned to play). 

And although Jooheon digs the arguably enthusiastic attitude of the temporal frontman and Hyungwon mindlessly copies the other’s ideas with his own beautifully honed and flawless style, Minhyuk cannot tolerate this apparent shameless mutiny anymore.

“Changkyun,” he exclaims, and everyone in the room turns to look at him. “You’re not the leader of the band,” he says calmly now, although his eyes are sharp and oriented on expressing his profound displeasure with the situation. “Stop interrupting, we all share ideas in equal measures.”

“Oh,” Changkyun replies blandly. “Sorry.” And there isn’t a note of apology in his voice. Minhyuk inhales and returns his attention back to his bass, when Changkyun takes a light-light step forward and starts again, “I’m just,” he pauses, “really into it. I didn’t realise I was annoying or anything.”

He sounds moderately sincere now, but Minhyuk is too proud to raise his eyes and offer a smile of armistice. They resume the easy tune of ‘Sweater Weather’, Minhyuk singing majority of it and Hyungwon harmonising in the background, and then after Changkyun’s insistent criticism and lack of parts, remove the song from the options list. 

By the end of the day, they’ve played all mainstream Green Day songs, one My Chemical Romance title on Changkyun’s demand (they crossed it out immediately), tried to remix a couple of pop songs into alternative, nailed Metallica but put it aside in the fear of it being too niche for their university population, and nearly composed their own track out of nowhere.

Jooheon slumps in his round little seat and pouts, whining. “I have a deadline in two days.”

“Same,” Hyungwon adds melancholically, wiping his guitar affectionately. 

“I don’t,” Changkyun inserts for no reason whatsoever and rolls the sleeves of his shirt, scratching over his magnificently done sleeve tattoo. 

Minhyuk shouldn’t use the word ‘magnificent’ in relation to the short guy.

“I don’t either but I don’t walk around bragging about it.” He mutters, terribly out of strength. His fingers ache.

“I’ll look into our originals and see if I can print out some tabs for Changkyun for the next practice.” Jooheon gets up and goes to gather his stuff. Minhyuk watches him regretfully, sad about his friend leaving so soon, and then jumps up to give him a tight hug. They’ll see each other tomorrow anyway, but it’s always better to bid farewell with sincere physical contact—that’s Minhyuk’s life motto. They cheerfully wave Jooheon a see you later and slump back into atmosphere of pure gloom and devastation. 

Hyungwon, who’s never been responsible about his essay deadlines, absently stares into the distance like he’s leading a very important debate in his mind. “I won’t sleep until five a.m. anyways, so I can stay practice for a bit more.” Minhyuk and Changkyun acknowledge his words silently. “But first, I really need a coffee.”

Minhyuk tucks the bass under his stomach and musters a pensive expression. “You ever considered that maybe the reason you have insomnia is because you drink shittons of caffeinated coffee?”

“Actually, caffeine is found not only in coffee, but in other things too, take tea or Coke or any other energy drink,” Changkyun says out of nowhere and turns to Hyungwon, dimpled smile back on his face and not a trace of malicious intents. “So if you drink those too,” he gives a side eye to a pack of Coke cans in the corner where they stack basically anything that enters this room, and shrugs, “I’d recommend drinking less of it. You might get heart failure later in life or have gastrointestinal problems as an effect of caffeine overdose.”

Whereas Hyungwon listens and looks like he’s receiving such a basic information for the first time, Minhyuk shakes his head with a grimace. “‘Scuse me, what are you studying?” He asks with a note of scorn. 

Changkyun turns to him and gives him a blank look of an innocent little coffee bean. “Biochemistry, why?”

“You’re doing Biochem?” Minhyuk curves his eyebrows, voice losing all of the previous notes of scorn and turning surprised. 

“Yeah, and you?”

Minhyuk swallows, suddenly feeling like he’s done something wrong in life. “Art.”

Instead of an anticipated amused grin, Changkyun blinks and says just as innocently, “I like art.”

“Cool tats,” Hyungwon cuts in.

“Thanks, yours too.” Changkyun replies without skipping a beat. Hyungwon smiles sweetly.

“Cool,” Minhyuk slaps his knees and attempts to get up, “heard someone needed coffee, I’ll go get some.”

Hyungwon immediately appears worried and jumps to stand up. “No, Min, it’s okay, I’ll go.” He reaches the stack wall before Minhyuk and puts his guitar down, and there’s nothing left for the other guy to do than settle back into his seat. “You want coffee?” Hyungwon asks both of them.

“Don’t worry about it,” Changkyun declines politely, and Minhyuk shakes his head, unconscious pout growing on his lips. He falls into Hyungwon’s embrace and feels a tad bit lighter at heart. It won’t be a long separation, but he knows it will get even gloomier with less people in the room. 

When Hyungwon leaves the two of them alone, strange thick silence engulfs the previously eager atmosphere. Minhyuk starts idly strumming a simple rhythm. 

“Wanna go for a smoke?” Changkyun offers quietly.

Minhyuk shrugs. “Sure.”

After Changkyun stands up and props his guitar against the wall (they really need to buy guitar stands or they’ll scratch everything in this room), he quickly removes the cap off his head, and shiny, luscious, straight black hair falls into his eyes, hiding them. He tilts his head back and brushes his fingers through the grown bangs, thin ridged throat column exposed and jawline sharp, and in the short five seconds it took Changkyun to put his cap back on, Minhyuk didn’t move an inch. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t exist. 

This short discourteous motherfucker is a handsome little bastard, he bitterly thinks. 

Minhyuk scrolls through Changkyun’s Instagram anyway. Out of spite, he tells himself. He’s got posts with his tattoos, mainly just arms and back, and it’s unfair how well they’re done. There’s always too much shadow and saturation filters on his pictures, like he’s trying to seem all emo and mysterious, but his caption under a pic of him smoking in the middle of the night in a black wide t-shirt says ‘nearly failed my exam’, and the post straight after that is a collection of photos from the club.

There’s a picture where Changkyun doesn’t have his cap on. His hair falls on the sides of his face, reaching below his eyes, and his brow piercing gleams in the flashlight. It’s unfair how soft his hair is, it’s unfair that he’s hiding it all day long under beanies and caps and hoods, like some uncultured emo. Minhyuk is too reluctant to admit to doing the same, but his hair is fluffy like a poodle, and Changkyun’s hair silky like a black panther, so it’s a fair reasoning in his honest opinion.

Changkyun’s stories from today are aesthetically taken morning coffee, Jooheon’s orange head peeking from behind the drum set, a friend Minhyuk doesn’t care about, a sunset, and Changkyun smoking a joint with people in the park at night. Minhyuk’s story from today is Hyungwon pouring banana milk all over himself with a face of a child who’s seen it all.

He plugs in his guitar to the amplifier in his room and records himself playing a cool solo he wrote, then posts it in his stories later to flex his skills and occasionally checks if Changkyun has seen it too.

“Short people always wanna pretend to be the greatest. No, seriously, he’s so rude. Charming, but rude. Jesus, I really hate cheeseburgers, I don’t understand what chemicals they put in Maccies ones that makes them so good? He even does chemistry, I mean, who even does chemistry nowadays anyway? Yeah, so, we told him we wanna do Queen and suddenly he went all rockstar on us, as if he wasn’t just a substitute for our actual frontman. I want Kihyun back, at least he seems apologetic whenever he’s found in the wrong. Ah, fuck, a gherkin.” Minhyuk grimaces and tears the burger apart, squeamishly picking a pickle with the tips of his fingers. “And he’s got a fucking nose ring on that massive thing.” He mutters as an afterthought.

“When I got my septum, you said absolutely nothing marvelling about it,” Hyungwon cuts in, munching his shrimp wrap. Jooheon carefully wipes the sauce from the corner of his lips with a thumb.

“Well,” Minhyuk pauses, unable to really justify himself. Hyungwon’s pretty––hair bleached and face puffy on this gloomy white morning, but pretty, and Minhyuk is too used to it. He can name all his tattoos by heart, even the ridiculous snake on his left butt cheek, and they grew up watching each other’s fingers grow stronger as they dedicated hours and hours and hours of daily guitar practice. 

Changkyun, he’s an enigma. Ridiculously dressed punk with a tongue piercing and tiny-tiny pimples under his jawline, but still an enigma. Besides, he’s attractive if you look at him closely.

“He’s skillful though,” Jooheon manages through a burger mush in his mouth.

“He’s just musically bright, but his voice isn’t Kihyun’s,” Minhyuk notices, although he has no reason to, and Hoseok looks pitifully at him.

“No one’s Kihyun,” he says.

“No, shit,” Jooheon quips, licking ketchup off his fingers.

Minhyuk sighs, staring at his bitten cheeseburger. “I miss Kihyun.”

“Well, I printed out some tabs, ‘Give Me That’ and ‘Trespass’, just to try them out with Kyun,” Jooheon changes the topic, and the rest of them grimace at the sudden nickname. “Wanna go over them together?” 

Minhyuk doesn’t immediately realise that Jooheon is referring to him. “Wait, me?” His voice breaks into a high-pitched exclamation, and the other guy blinks, unfazed. “Why?”

“Me and Hyungwon have deadlines and exams to prepare for, you don’t until much later.” Jooheon reasons and after swallowing the rest of his burger in one bite, reaches into his bag. 

“But what are we gonna do without drums? Man, you really have to be there.” Minhyuk tries to convince, but Jooheon is already extending several sheets of music tabs across the table, and he has nothing left to do but take them and accept his destiny. He may not be the most courteous of guys, but he would do anything for the band, for Rocksta X. It’s his home, his pride, his family. 

Changkyun will just have to live up to it. 

Two weeks until the festival, two practice sessions behind their shoulders, and all Minhyuk and Changkyun achieved is a stuffy room and ripped music sheets. 

“No, look, ‘Give Me Dat’ is perfect for that!” Changkyun exclaims.

“Why don’t you like ‘Destroyer’, I helped produce that song!” Minhyuk shouts back.

“It’s too sad, and GMD is sexy and has this vibe, like, that really good vibe.”

“GM-what?” Minhyuk scrunches his face.

“‘Give Me Dat’,” Changkyun says like Minhyuk is stupid.

“Why d’you say it like that?” The bassist is settled on the floor, bass and guitar discarded and warm leather Dr Martens untied. 

“Like what?” Changkyun jumps off the chair and fans his face, a silver chain dinging with every movement. 

“‘Dat’? It’s _that_, it’s not d, it th-sound,” Minhyuk tries to explain, sticking his tongue out to demonstrate exactly how to speak English. 

“And you never say your r’s but you don’t see me walking around criticising your speech.” For a moment, Changkyun looks genuinely offended. He’s got that disappointed look in his eyes, like a puppy that’s been left outside for too long while the whole family is having dinner, and Minhyuk feels a sting in his chest. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles offhandedly.

The shorter guy sits down. “‘Unfair Love’ is also good, Jooheon can go crazy with the drums,” Changkyun puts forward another suggestion, but Minhyuk still hears that note of uneasiness in the other’s low murmur.

“Okay, how about,” Minhyuk gets up, “we try GMD again but this time pretend like we have our entire band gathered.” Changkyun’s head perks up and his eyes briefly light up at the slip of ‘our’. “We just have to go crazy and stupid, because that’s how the song goes, and I’ll help you sing the chorus just before your little lines you suggested.”

“You like that?” Changkyun asks, a sprout of a smile curling in the corners of his mouth. “You like the little lines I added?”

“Yeah,” Minhyuk says sincerely, “they really fit into the song. I always thought just Kihyun’s vocals was a bit bland.”

Changkyun smiles, and when he smiles like that, mouth curling and cheeks puffing, inconspicuous dips of dimples appear on the sides of his mouth and on the apples of his cheeks, untraceable but visible in the insistent white light of their practice room. Minhyuk smiles back.

The other is, like, superbly pretty without his stupid cap on. 

He picks up his electric guitar and raises it up. “Shall we?” 

Changkyun breathes out a silent laugh and gets up, taking his own acoustic too. 

It’s just the two of them, but they go so dangerously crazy and ridiculously stupid that Minhyuk is sure––their song is well heard in the corridor. Changkyun wouldn’t stop jumping around, tiring himself so much he took off his hoodie and stayed in a sleeveless loose tank, and Minhyuk doesn’t even care if he strums off tune.

There are patterns and drawings and everything-everything leading up Changkyun’s arms to the shoulders, and through the wide cuts under the pits he can see more designs around the ribs and on the back. He thrashes around, like a true punk he is, bangs his head against empty air and pretends to smash his guitar he doesn’t need anyways (they’ve got a demo playing on loop), and Minhyuk doesn’t see a pretentious bastard anymore; he sees a scene stealer, a performer. Jooheon, he goes solo every once in a while, he lights up the stage with charisma and fire and this smooth glowing aura, he spreads the sense of danger that’s enticing and sublime, and if Minhyuk were to compare, Changkyun’s danger is the one people should run away from. 

If you get too close, he’d kick you right in the face, and he’d be right to do that. Minhyuk bends the strings one last time and milks the sound until it’s faded, and when Changkyun looks at him, shining from sweat and excitement, gives him an impressed shake of the head.

“Kihyun would be so jealous right now,” Minhyuk says, throwing the guitar strap over his head. Changkyun smiles with his teeth, tongue poking between them, and he looks almost shy. Gleeful, but shy.

It seems like there’s finally one full stop in their list; all they have left to do is choose: one, a mainstream rock song, and two, give Queen a cover the legends deserve.

A few days later, Minhyuk is chilling in Hyunwoo’s tattoo studio while Hyungwon is lying flat on his stomach, shirtless, getting his dragon wings finished. 

“So what happened when you got high with Kyun in the park?” Hyungwon lazily asks, twitching his face at a particular hard swipe of a napkin over raw skin. 

Minhyuk plays with a straw of his milkshake, thinking back to last night. Changkyun offered to go smoke after practice, and Minhyuk didn’t have the guts to refuse, although he still likes to keep his mild facade of a Changkyun Anti. It’s turning into a gag now more than anything, really. “Well, we smoked and then started singing Nirvana, because that’s what he always does when high, apparently, and then it occurred to us that that’s a good band to play.” Minhyuk explained simply and truthfully. 

Hyungwon’s soft cheek is squished against the operating table. He looks like a cute blob. “D’you guys make out?”

Something slithers down Minhyuk’s entire digestive tract, and his eyes widen. “No? No!” He makes a face at Hyungwon’s dumb question. “Why would we, it was just a bonding hangout.” He scoffs, royally offended. “I mean, who even has libido when high,” he mumbles and loudly sips his milkshake. He doesn’t actually like milkshakes, but he met Changkyun on the way from uni campus and took what was offered to him. ‘I’m so late for my lecture, please have it, I really gotta run,’ the other guy blurted out and shoved the cup into Minhyuk’s hand. He stood there waiting for the short figure to disappear in the horizon. 

Hyungwon spiked an eyebrow, pained look in his eyes. “Kihyun does.”

Minhyuk pretended to be disgusted and directed his attention at a very concentrated Hyunwoo.

What his attention span lacks in is noticing how quickly he jumps to open a Snapchat notification from _ckimboi_ and immediately goes on the chat. Changkyun is seemingly in the library, bored and as always in his black hoodie, head tilted back and to the side and caption saying ‘bored, wanna practice?’ 

Minhyuk takes a good two minutes to reply. Deciding that although the temptation is strong, he can’t leave his best friend alone. Even if his best friend has long fallen asleep.

He sends a pic of Hyungwon’s bloodied back and replies with a ‘maybe in two hours?’. Changkyun sends back a thumbs up in front of his almost smiling grimace. Minhyuk doesn’t notice a little smile sticking to his lips. 

Later the same afternoon, Minhyuk and Changkyun have a mild semblance of lunch in a form of Starbucks toasties, then the shorter grabs his guitar and they take a bus directly to Minhyuk’s home. I left the tabs in my room, is his excuse. It’s true, but for some reason none of them mentions that they have already learned their original track by heart. 

“Wack,” Changkyun utters, head hanging off the end of Minhyuk’s bed. His little cross earrings threaten to break his ears in half. 

The other sighs, eyes crossing and parting from all the music notes he’s had to read over the past hours. “Absolute, utter, actual bullshit.”

“You have any snacks?”

Minhyuk weakly nods without looking at the other guy. He shares the house with Hyungwon (and, consequently, Kihyun) and another dude named Seungcheol who parties so much he’s barely at home, so until very late at night, the house is fully at their command. Changkyun comes down to find something to nibble. 

Minhyuk moves to sit on his small double bed, texts his friends, stares at his bass and intensely thinks of what they can do. Nothing, nothing at all comes to mind. No matter how much he plays, no matter how incredible his own tunes are, he still got no idea of what other songs to play at the festival. 

When Changkyun comes back, he’s absently playing the rhythm of ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’. Sometimes he wishes he was born back in the 60s or something like that, sometimes he wishes he could start a revolution in the world of rock and become a frontman of a famous band, speak about his nominal exoticness and prove his artistry, play music all he wants and get girls and boys fall on his knees just for him and him only, worship him because he is amazing, sexy, talented, amazing and magnificent, individualistic and irreplaceable, one of a kind, a legend. But, maybe, he was born in the wrong time, and the period of musical excellence has long been gone. 

A loud slurp from the corner of the room gets him out of his daydream. Minhyuk glances up at the shorter guy, reads the letters on a little packet in his inked hands, notices his puckered cherry-coloured lips, and suddenly, he feels tears swelling in the corners of his eyes. “You’re drinking chocolate milk?” He asks, face endeared and yet bordering on a strange expression of sadness, like that teary-eyed emoji on iPhone. 

Changkyun releases a straw with a quiet smack. “Yeah.”

Minhyuk feels the same squirming in his chest he felt the first time they had a practice. The kind of squirming that he is too nervous to name but the kind he understands from the bottom of his heart. “You’re adorable,” he mutters in a strained voice. 

Changkyun slurps louder, finishing the drink. “It’s just chocolate milk.” He puts the empty packet on the table. “I love chocolate milk.”

Minhyuk is scared he won’t be able to contain his tears of endearment, so he looks down at his phone and endures the maddening thrashing of his heart. “He’s drinking chocolate milk,” he whispers to himself and almost sniffs, something wholesome blooming in his heart and mind. A bloodied rose is raising its petals up for the artificial sun on the back of Changkyun’s right hand. A royal crown is glistening under the lamp on the other. 

Minhyuk wants to hold of his fragile hands and kiss every single tattooed knuckle. 

Sighing, he tries to chase the thought away by scrolling through his phone, music playlists, videos, tweets, stories––anything that help him, a: get over the squirming in his chest, and b: finally come up with a decent idea. He’s still a bit pissed about Nancy Sinatra rejection from before. 

“Hey, so you know Queen,” Minhyuk suddenly starts, tucking his bass firmer under his arms and focusing all his attention on the screen of his phone. Changkyun nods at him with his eyebrows. “Yeah, come look, I found that performance we did.”

Changkyun sits on the bed next to him, but Minhyuk, still holding on to his precious instrument, leans against the headrest, and the shorter guy has to scramble under the long-long neck of the bass to be by Minhyuk’s side. In the video, Rocksta X is gathered on a small campus stage, a decent crowd of youthful faces in front of them. Kihyun is sitting by the piano at the front, small and compact and ridiculously preppy in a formal striped blouse. 

No one comments on the frontman’s attire when he opens his mouth and

_Love of my life, you’ve hurt me_

_You’ve broken my heart and now you leave me_

He isn’t just a skilled singer. It’s not Wembley ‘86 scale, never will be, of course, but Kihyun knows what he is doing, whose and which emotions he is pouring out of him so effortlessly and so beautifully. He has a fitting range and polished technique and if anything, he does the cover justice, not with his appearance but with talent, and Minhyuk, even though he has witnessed it live from the stage, still feels something tugging at his heart. It’s not only the song that evokes something mushy and gooey and toxically heartbreaking all over his body; it’s the delivery, crystal and pure like freshly fallen snow, it’s words pronounced with emotions of one’s own, sincere like a bird’s morning song, it’s the atmosphere of bleaky admiration and, well, woe. 

Hyungwon wishes he had Minhyuk’s metaphors in his poetry books. 

He realises he doesn’t manage to successfully hide the idle tears when Changkyun turns to look at him with a mix of worry hidden in his bushy eyebrows and light amusement curled in his lips. “You’re crying?” He asks, without concern and without teasing. He just asks, understanding that if anything could get the bassist emotional, it’s their own performance. 

“A bit, yeah,” Minhyuk sniffs. The song finishes, and he tosses the phone into the pillows, then proceeds to look up at the ceiling and find a scientific explanation to Kihyun’s nature-given talentry. 

Changkyun breathes out a little laugh and leans into the pillows too, folding his hands on his stomach. It’s probably the calmest it’s been between the two of them since they met. It’s not like they were really against each other, it was mainly just Minhyuk being a lawful Englishman and Changkyun pushing his Northern Irish freewill onto others. 

“Kihyun’s cool.” The latter says.

Minhyuk turns his head to look at him. “He has a boyfriend, you know.”

Changkyun snorts. “Shut up, not what I meant.” Then the silence falls upon them again.

They have to blow the audience away. They have to do it with passion, with frustration, with sex and with carelessness. Be the best. Maybe…

Make all the others fall face first into the dirt. 

His fingers automatically move to play a rather simple riff, bit pop-ish and catchy, and Changkyun turns to look at him with eyes of a victorious detective. 

“‘Another One Bites The Dust?’” Minhyuk nods and closes his eyes with a little smile, bopping his head to the bass. “I can do that.” Changkyun puckers his lips in thought, “Wee bit too high for me but should work.”

Minhyuk laughs silently and as if by some electric urge, sits up abruptly and bounces off the bed. “Let’s go, let’s go, gonna practice!”

Changkyun hesitates in surprise, brain short-circuited with Minhyuk’s sudden overwhelming energy, and awkwardly stumbles off the bed too. The bassist fiddles with the amplifier to set the right sound and then jumps straight into the music. 

“Lyrics, lyrics!” Changkyun exclaims and fishes out his phone, scarcely managing to find the words for the song before the introducing bar goes by.

“Get the tambourine!” Minhyuk suggests and nods in the direction of his music shelf by the amplifier. Changkyun gets the instrument and loses his mind in a way he likes it best––crazy and stupid. 

He more growls than sings, but that makes Minhyuk laugh and it’s almost all that matters. Changkyun as if he got so high on sugar he forgot what singing even meant. ‘Rap is the way, my dear fella!’ He shouted and headbanged against an invisible gnome. 

Minhyuk briefly wonders what the other turns into if you offer him beer. 

They manage to tire themselves out by playing the same song on loop over and over without a break, with every new start tumbling further into a mess of tambourine and off-tune bass notes, and by the end of this futile headbanging sesh, Minhyuk (gently) tosses the bass away and plops on his bed. 

“Well, this is sorted then.”

Changkyun snorts, and when Minhyuk sits up, he can still see the dopey little smile hanging around the other’s mouth. It’s ridiculously dopey, lopsided and crooked as the teeth on his left side get more exposure than on the other, but it does things to Minhyuk’s little heart. Whole two of them––he’s got another one tattooed on his right shoulder with a striking ‘free love’ spelled on the tape across the cartoon heart. 

Not really his idea, he just went with the flow of the moment. 

The other guy catches his eyes and closes his mouth, hint of a smile still remaining. Minhyuk mirrors it, and then tries not to swallow it down with growing pounding in his chest when Changkyun takes a step towards the bed, then another, then another. 

He knows exactly where this is leading, if only he plays his cards right. Or maybe he doesn’t even have to, not with the way Changkyun changes his gait to a slightly more controlled one compared to his usual wide-spaced mugger tread, and not with the way his sharp (and absurdly pretty) eyes glint just a little too intimately in the bright light of the bedroom. 

Minhyuk unconsciously (he isn’t sure if he needs an ‘un’ in the word yet) bites on his lower lip when Changkyun moves close-close-close and fits between his spread legs, looks down at him and lightly, almost invisibly, slides his hands along the sleeves of Minhyuk’s shirt. 

They both read it right. That’s what soulmates are made for, actually––comprehend exactly when and where the situation commands the first kiss to happen. 

So Minhyuk doesn’t hesitate to put his hands on Changkyun’s hips and straighten his back and neck right when the other curls down, and their mouths bump into each other halfway, softly and nicely. 

It starts with a tender touch, and because Minhyuk’s heart thrashes behind his ribcage, he knows he doesn’t want it to rush yet. He kisses gently, lips laid against each other equally, and lingers for as long as he’s allowed to. Changkyun smells nice, and his breaths still hold sweet tinges of chocolate in them. Minhyuk detaches with a sweet little sound, so quiet it would be inaudible be there someone else in the room. 

And as if on cue, they reach for each other’s lips again, kissing in a way that allows Minhyuk to affectionately touch the thin bottom lip with his and sensually swipe his tongue over it, all while Changkyun finds himself busy sucking on his top one, already wanting to go further. 

With a loud inhale, they press tighter, and Changkyun’s fingers firmly dance along his shoulders and over his neck and bury in the dry black locks at the back of Minhyuk’s head. He brings him closer, pulls himself flush against the other’s chest, and kisses wetly around Minhyuk’s lips, a smack a second, like what he truly wants is to eat him alive.

Minhyuk would laugh at it, and he _is_ lightly giggling on the inside, but Changkyun is hot, confident, ludicrously firm under his palms, and obviously here for more than just a little stress relief. That’s what Minhyuk loves about building relationships––that you get affection not only as a piece of flesh, but as a person beyond physical matters too. But first, before he deepens into philosophical pondering, he needs to give Changkyun’s surprisingly plush bum a good suggestive squeeze.

The shorter replies to the manipulation with a scratch down the back of his neck, evoking some kind of ardour within. Excitement slithers down his limbs, gathers in the pit of his stomach like thick porridge, and he can’t help but sneak his fingers under Changkyun’s hoodie. 

And then Minhyuk opens his mouth and lets the other’s tongue lick over the tip of his own, and fiery arousal seeps––downpours––from his mouth along all his tissues to his crotch, gathering and temporary storing all his common sense and rationality in his smaller head. By the way Changkyun’s strained tent presses against his stomach, Minhyuk can guess he is in the exact same situation. 

And he really doesn’t seem to be the one for teasing, because Changkyun immediately sneaks his tongue further into his mouth, and Minhyuk squirms, shivers when his teeth accidentally tap against the metal bud. It only briefly flashes before his eyes, an image of that ridiculously long tongue licking over his dick, but it makes Minhyuk inhale harshly and twitch someone at the bottom of his being.

Changkyun starts tugging at shoulder pads, wants the dumb shirt gone, and Minhyuk regretfully detaches himself from milk-flavoured lips and raises his arms. Lips back on his while short fingers immediately dig into the tattoos on his forearms, scratch back up to the shoulders and then down over his flat and only slightly stained chest. Minhyuk doesn’t find it reasonable to contain a slight pleasured hum when Changkyun finds his nipples and rubs them maybe just a tad bit too aggressively. 

“You too,” Minhyuk mutters and fists the damned hoodie. Changkyun straightens, groaning in his throat at the ache in his neck, and pulls the shirt over his head with the same loose tank, exposing his entire––

Minhyuk is too unwilling to say it but––

magnificent torso, tattooed down from collarbones to the waistband of his jeans. There are clean areas, of course, some absolutely separate drawings standing out alone on the whole canvas, but even the vague mix of styles and mild colours in places and irregular shapes doesn’t disturb the harmony of his body. Most paint one big picture all over him frame, but Changkyun is not an ordinary guy, as Minhyuk found out, and he is so, so fucking into it.

His eyes widen unsexily when he distinguishes the source of slight silver shimmer in the area of his small chest. Changkyun puts his hands back on Minhyuk’s shoulders and tilts his head down, confused. “What?”

But Minhyuk can’t reply, doesn’t want to reply, he wants his lips busy around a tiny dark nipple with two buds of a piercing gracing it from both sides. He buries his face in the other’s chest, traps the left nipple between his lips, licks it fast and wet, feels the slight cool of the metal on his tongue. His fingers come up to tease the other bud, blindly flick the piercing around, and Changkyun’s arms tightly hug around Minhyuk’s head, almost squeezing him into his skin. He releases a low raspy hum. 

Minhyuk kisses and sucks the other nipple, and Changkyun moans, so quiet it’s almost soundless. When he moves away, he stares at the hard brown pierced dots like it’s the most astonishing sight he’s ever lived to witness.

“That’s so hot,” he whispers in a strained voice, and Changkyun grabs him under the jawline and forcefully raises his head to kiss him.

Before either of them loses his mind and drowns deeper into the moment, Minhyuk detaches from the other’s cherry lips and kisses down his neck, his magnificent, sculptured neck. He licks over his throat, tastes the vibrating hums with his lips, and bites down on the honey-coloured skin, sucking a little bit in. He doesn’t hear any threatening ‘no marks’ coming from above, so he indulges himself, travels in open-mouthed kisses to the side of his neck, right where a little tattoo of a snake rests over his artery. 

It doesn’t matter if the world comes to an end in less than a minute. He has to leave a hickey right under the ink.

And Minhyuk does, paints the skin in strawberry red and grape purple, doesn’t stop on one bruise but sucks a few small ones right around the tattoo, and Changkyun hums, seemingly pleased. 

Before Minhyuk can lead a trail of marks to the nipples again, Changkyun sinks down on his knees. After comfortably settling down in silence and still not feeling any fingers in his hair, he looks up with a raised eyebrow. 

“Can I?” Changkyun asks casually, like his hand is reaching into a pack of Doritos and not tugging at the belt around Minhyuk’s trousers. 

“Uh-huh,” he breathes out, dazed and absent from the real world as the only thing he can process is his cock finally being let free to breathe some fresh air. Changkyun is on his knees for him, flushed cheeks and swollen lips, black tattoos on his shoulders on display, small hands with chipped off black nail polish wrapped around the bassist’s girth, black hair falling into his eyes and maximising this inhuman predatory aesthetic so much it has Minhyuk leaking. “Fuck, yeah,” he breathes out when the warm tongue touches the pink head and sends his inflamed nerves to burn further. 

Changkyun strokes him lightly, gets him harder than Minhyuk thought he could get, looks at his cock like it’s a scientific object, and then sinks down on it, swallows as much as he can. Minhyuk tips his head back, moans with vain curses, fists the bed sheets, and when Changkyun pulls away and gives him another look, moves his hands into the crown of black hair. 

Both of his hands are working around the shaft and balls, while his tongue licks off the salty precum and covers the tip with saliva. Minhyuk hisses when the metal ball slides along his length. Changkyun does it again, and again, presses his tongue flat to the warm flesh and does something impossible to Minhyuk’s entire being. He always took him for a mouthy one; he didn’t mean it in that way back then.

Wet smacks and slurps around his cock make Minhyuk squirm, his thighs jerk involuntarily, his moans come out strained. Changkyun seems to catch on every single one of his bodily reactions, because he does it again and louder, makes as much noise as he can, looks up at the other with black piercing eyes, and Minhyuk ruffles the overgrown bangs to see his face. His handsome, cheeky little face that has Minhyuk wrapped around Changkyun’s crooked little pinkie as his lips are wrapped around his furiously blushing cock. 

Changkyun has a small mouth and yet he sucks so well, plays with the head and pumps the rest with a steady hand, and Minhyuk stupidly marvels at how he needs to put just a little bit of effort into letting his fingers meet his thumb around the shaft. And then he speeds up, hollows his cheeks and goes down faster and quicker, still smacking loudly and obnoxiously whenever he moves back to the head to take a breath. 

Minhyuk doesn’t resist the urge to thrust his hips up. Changkyun reads it as a sign that he is ready to cum sometime soon and tightly grips at the base, removing himself from the cock completely. “Wanna cum now?” His voice is so impossibly deep, raspy, and as if predicting the answer, he puts one hand to his own crotch. 

“You mind?” On the contrary, Minhyuk’s voice is weakly hoarse and airy, absolutely unimpressive.

Changkyun finds it hot though, if the way his hand uncontrollably squeezes himself though the fabric is any indication of that. “Well, I’m still on my knees, eh.” What follows his remark is a sharp, teasing smirk. 

Minhyuk hates when others smirk. He hates the word ‘smirk’, if he really goes there. But he looks at Changkyun’s mouth and jerks his hips forward. 

Mouth back on Minhyuk’s dick, he roughly tries to pull the other’s pants further down his thighs. Minhyuk raises his butt off the bed as much as he can to help Changkyun at least a little, but what he achieves instead in a sincere gag from the other’s stuffed throat, and he hums in husky delight. 

Changkyun blows him until the only sound bassist is able to produce is a high-pitched short airy moan, and before Minhyuk explodes, he leads his dick out of his mouth and jerks him off quick and rough. Minhyuk shudders and grimaces, feels the release course through him, and he cums over his stomach with a strained gasp in short white splatters. 

The other milks him through the orgasm, watching with calm fascination as the overworked cock starts to twitch in incoming oversensitivity. Minhyuk tries to come to his senses almost immediately, not forgetting that Changkyun is still painfully strained in his pants. 

He stands up. Minhyuk’s eyes fall on the undone zipper and a big bulge begging to get out of the restraints of tight fabric. He cracks his knuckles and does exactly that––helps Changkyun’s cock spring hard and free. He thinks his large hand looks incredibly hot around his incredibly flushed dick.

“Come on, get on my lap,” Minhyuk breathes out and scrambles a little further up the bed, and Changkyun follows, puts his clothed knees on either sides of his waist and straddles his stomach, just barely missing a cum stain.

Minhyuk pumps him fast, watches as the red tip disappears and reappears in the ring of his fingers, slick and sensitive. Changkyun moans and hisses through gritted teeth, his voice so low Minhyuk might as well just get hard again.

“Come on baby,” the shorter guy exhales and thrusts his hips in tune to the manipulations, his own movements harsh but long, like he is made of jelly and his joints aren’t a hindrance to bending him in half. Bending him in half both ways, at that.

Minhyuk briefly hopes he’d get to check it at some point.

“Yeah, baby,” Changkyun utters and closes his eyes, plays with his own chest, bites on his lips, feels the orgasm gather at the end of his entire being. He jerks and cums thickly on Minhyuk’s stomach, mixing his mess with the other’s. Changkyun releases a little groan in a form of a ‘yeah’, his fingertips still lightly tracing up and down his torso. 

He looks down at Minhyuk from behind hooded eyelids, still in his sexy headspace. Minhyuk can’t even say anything––he’s just a little stunned and maybe crushed. With a crush. There’s no use denying it now. 

What Changkyun does next is lean forward and kiss him softly. Minhyuk tastes himself on his lips but embraces it, puts his hands on the tattooed shoulders, lightly strokes them up and down the forearms. Changkyun gifts his swollen top lip a final smooch and moves away, a tiny-tiny smile hiding in the corners. All the sex is gone from his gaze.

“I like you,” he simply says, and to pretend like his heart isn’t immediately picking up its pace at the words, Minhyuk sighs dramatically and flies a hand to his forehead.

“Oh, thank god. At least it wasn’t ‘I fancy you’.”

Changkyun laughs, laughs in a way that makes subtle dimples on the apples of his cheeks appear, and Minhyuk really wants to say the same. “I like you too.”

The other looks calm but curious, and if there is one word that could describe him at the moment, then ‘pretty’ would totally make it onto the list. “Do you actually?”

“Yeah.” Minhyuk turns his head in a way that softens his features into a pouch of softness under his chin, and Changkyun quickly scratches it like a pet. 

“At first I thought you didn’t, but then threw all the doubts away.” Before Minhyuk can ask him why, Changkyun finishes, “I’m not dumb,” he breathes out a little amused smile, “can see right through you.”

Minhyuk lightly punches him in the shoulder and then drops his head on his stomach and, boy, does he feel all the contempt he has for humanity fog off his skin. “Fucking hell,” he breathes out and looks at his stained hand. 

Changkyun laughs with a little bit of sympathy for him and gets up to find something to clean them up. Minhyuk only then notices his lame Venom socks. 

The way Changkyun carefully wipes his torso up with a bunch of napkins is strangely endearing. He looks over his body with his usual blank face, but something warm ignites in his eyes that makes lovebugs in Minhyuk’s throat buzz anew. 

The shorter sits back on his heels, offers a polite smile. “Have to go back,” but it’s not like the atmosphere is awkward. It’s actually… promising, in a good way. “Promised my roommate I’ll study with him for a bit.”

Minhyuk looks at his watch. “It’s, like, ten now.”

Changkyun acknowledges his words with a lazy raise of his eyebrows. “Yeah. He’s one unorganised lad.”

Minhyuk walks him downstairs, watches him put his painted black Converse on and sling a bag over his shoulder. He opens the door but hesitates to leave, looks back at Minhyuk with shimmers of smile in his eyes. The bassist is stuck, somehow in doubt of what to do, considers it too far-fetched to offer a little smoke before he leaves, so he’s left admiring the way the same cheeky amused smile plasters itself on Changkyun’s face. 

“Bye, babe,” he says casually and leaves, short and all in black and reeking of satisfaction and confidence like the punk he is. 

Minhyuk closes the door and feels all giddy and squirming at the dumb pet name. He smiles though, head empty of anything else but the other’s short figure and his big nose. Changkyun’s kind of cool. 

The next day Minhyuk descends to the practice room with butterflies and sparkles levitating over his head. 

“Good day!” He exclaims as he shoves the door open and flies in. 

“Day good,” Jooheon, with camouflage trackies bask in the game, replies and sips his Red Bull. 

Hoseok, blue jeans and white shirt like Lana Del Rey’s ideal of a man, came to watch their practice and give some opinions on the side, and he, Hyungwon, Jooheon and Changkyun are gathered around the set of two small brown leather couches and an armchair that are so old they fall apart at the seams. Minhyuk reaches the gang in inconspicuous hops, dropping his bass by the stack wall on the way.

There isn’t usually anything unusual about his sprouts of energy, so no one pays attention when he sits by Changkyun’s side and flings his arm over the other’s broad black-clad shoulders. Minhyuk carefully peeks at him to see the hickeys being messily covered with a layer of foundation. 

“You really insist we do ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ then, not anything else?” Jooheon refers to Changkyun, to which the other nods enthusiastically. 

“Yeah, we did it quite well, I think, Minhyuk an’ I, so why not,” he slurps his McDonalds milkshake. Minhyuk’s fingers unconsciously squeeze his shoulder a little tighter. What he seemingly does for the rest of the guys is nod with a little pout and raised eyebrows, as if he’s so obviously sure he doesn’t even need to insert his two pees. 

Changkyun casually puts his hand on Minhyuk’s knee.

“God, have you seen what Johnny was doing the other day?” Hoseok said, chewing on his plastic straw. The other day Changkyun went off about why plastic was bad and why they were all bad people and were going to hell, and then took out two quid and said he’d go buy himself a bottle of coke. 

“What, when they all went to KOKO?” Jooheon licked around the rim of the can.

“Yea-a-a-ah, literally,” Hoseok’s voice grows airy, “like, I thought he had a boyfriend, but have you seen Joshua’s Snapchat stories? Apparently they all went together, but Mark didn’t know about it, so he saw Johnny, and they were already drunk before they even went in––”

“But Mark’s his ex?” Hyungwon adds, distressed, chewing on ice cubes in his mouth. He’s been wearing the same black jeans and the same black t-shirt for three days in a row now. Changkyun starts lightly tapping Minhyuk’s knee with his overgrown nails. 

“Exactly! And they didn’t tell him!” While Minhyuk puts his head on Changkyun’s shoulder.

“Makes sense why Cheol didn’t go then,” Hyungwon sighs pensively.

“And Josh was like, it’s alright mate, so he was being all nice and sticking by Mark’s side, but secretly––oh god, this is literally the worst––you know how he’s always snapchatting when drunk,” the rest nods, and Hoseok continues, straightening in his seat, “he filmed Johnny making out with that Thai dude!”

“Did Mark see?” Hyungwon asks.

“‘Course he did! They’re friends!”

“Saw on Snapchat or in the club?” Jooheon asks a logical question. Changkyun’s hand slowly slides up to Minhyuk’s thigh and rests there.

“I don’t know, but he did find out, and then Vernon, his roomie, you know how they are friends with Josh, so yeah, he literally freaked out! He called Josh a snake,” Hoseok takes a dramatic pause, leaving his mouth slightly parted. “That’s peak.”

“They’re still friends, though, I saw them in the cafeteria the other day,” Hyungwon frowns.

“No, but, do you follow Vernon’s private IG?” They all shake their heads. “Did you not see what he posted, he literally posted his face, crying, and said how he couldn’t believe he was tolerating a snake for so many years, all because he knew how much Mark was hurting after the break-up and still invited them both to hang out.”

“That’s low,” Changkyun raises his voice for the first time, and the rest turn to look at him.

“Like, I know they could easily reconcile with Johnny––Mark with Johnny, I mean––but still, Josh needs to stop snapchatting like his life depends on it, he’s already started beef between Jackson and that Matthew lad once,” everyone’s attention turns back to Hoseok’s fascinating blabbering, but Jooheon keeps his sharp, feline eyes on Changkyun. 

“That Matt guy, the one that tried to grope you in the club once?” Hyungwon asks, scandalised. Jooheon’s gaze shifts to Minhyuk. 

“No-o-o-o, that was some random guy, I didn’t even know him. No, Matt’s my gym mate, we get on quite well,” Hoseok sips the rest of his fruit tea quickly, thirsty to finish his story.

“Are you guys fucking?” Jooheon asks and sinks into the couch, eyes suspiciously squinting at Minhyuk and Changkyun with unsettling intimidation. Hyungwon pretends he didn’t choke on his coffee.

“What? No!” Minhyuk denies immediately, straightening and putting on an appalled expression.

Jooheon squints at them harder. “Yeah, you are.”

“No,” Minhyuk says sternly, not removing his hand from Changkyun’s shoulder, however, and paying absolutely no attention to the way the other’s small hand is still gently squishing his thigh.

“Not yet, at least,” Changkyun says casually like he seems to say every single thing in the world. Minhyuk freezes, eyes rounded comically, and a sigh of ‘ah, fuck’ escapes his lips with anticipated doom. 

“Ha!” Jooheon exclaims and bends forward, victorious smile lighting up his features. “Knew it.”

“You guys are sneaking behind our backs,” Hyungwon says sadly, as if so deeply offended by the new information he can’t bear to imagine ever forgiving those two for their unpardonable crime.

“It only started, like, yesterday,” Changkyun replies and sips the remains of his milkshake, obviously handling the situation much better than Minhyuk. 

“You should’ve told us,” Hoseok mutters, eyes gleaming like that of a kicked puppy.

“We’re always here for the tea,” Jooheon adds, suddenly growing sulky. 

“Every little goss needs to be delivered to us, immediately,” Hoseok continues, heartbroken.

“We are your best friends and yet we are the last to know about your boy adventures.” Hyungwon sighs. 

“Hey, I always tell you guys everything! Can’t I have at least something to myself?” Minhyuk’s voice grows a little high-pitched with all the stress, and Changkyun just looks down at his milkshake with the same old cheeky amused half-smile.

“I told my friends,” Changkyun says, absolutely for no reason.

“What?”

“See!” Jooheon exclaims. “That’s what a good friend would do!”

“You told your friends?” Minhyuk asks, a little betrayed, and he only just notices how close their faces actually are.

“Well, yeah.” Changkyun looks him in the eyes, and the bassist wonders why he’s never realised that the other is actually inexplicably cute. Puppy-level adorable. Fourteen out of ten a good boy. “Just said there’s a guy I like,” his eyes quickly jump to Minhyuk’s lips and then back up, “might be getting somewhere with it.”

Hoseok releases a loud, obnoxious ‘aww’, curling his lips in an emoji-like smile. “Cuties.”

Hyungwon mindlessly breaks the ice cubes in his cup, eyes absently staring into airy nothingness, and wonders where his good old romantic days with his boyfriend have gone.

Yet another next day, Changkyun and Minhyuk finally find themselves alone in the latter guy’s house and put the third and final full stop in their track list. Having not managed to escape into the comforting darkness and have an honest discussion about the romantic matters the previous evening, both boys spent the night alone, sadly strumming sad tunes to sad silence and give in to the sadness induced by the impossible decision they have yet to make.

“Lithium!”

“The Man Who Stole The World!”

“We already have a classic, we can’t do a cover of a cover of another classic!”

“That’s a dumb tautology!”

“And TMWSTW is too long of a title!”

“A what now?”

“It’s an abbreviation, get on with the program!”

“Changkyun!” Minhyuk’s voice finally cracks from all the yelling. Good thing his housemates aren’t home.

“Lithium.” Changkyun folds his arms over his chest and puts all the weight on one leg, the side of his hip bulging. Minhyuk is too distracted following the outline of his jean-clad skinny calf to realise the silence has dragged out for too long. “You agree.” Changkyun declares. His t-shirt has a line drawing of a falling bird. 

“I did not!” Minhyuk rages again.

“Then stop staring at me and give me a reasonable argument,” Changkyun asserts, extremely cocky and overly proud of himself, and raises one corner of his mouth in a dumb grin.

“Don’t be an arsehole,” Minhyuk whines. As much as he hates to admit it, he feels a little bit overpowered by the shorter guy, feels a little head over heels for him. Head over Dr Martens, if he was still wearing them, that is.

What Changkyun does next seemingly concludes the argument. Taking confident but relaxed steps, he approaches Minhyuk face-to-face (face-to-neck, but that’s details) and looks up at him with his pretty sharp eyes and big crooked nose and cherry-coloured lips and glimmering piercings, and, yeah, Minhyuk’s a goner for him.

“Wanna see it?” Changkyun casually says as if he’s selling a new car model, and Minhyuk does a double take.

“What?”

But before Changkyun’s sneaky fingers manage to grab his collar and he raises on his tiptoes, Minhyuk is already leaning down to slot their mouths together. 

The kiss is rushed and wet, lead by Changkyun snaking his tongue into Minhyuk’s mouth and immediately playing with his own, knowing exactly how much that turns the bassist on. He tightly holds Minhyuk by the shoulders, cut nails digging into the skin through the shirt. And then Changkyun shoves him onto the bed––unceremoniously pushes him down without a warning and bends down to climb on top.

“Come on, move, move,” he breathes out and nods behind Minhyuk. It takes him a few seconds to realise through his dazed state that Changkyun is telling him to move towards the headrest. His mind is clouded, his body is still dealing with an abrupt urge of arousal, his eyes can only focus on the other’s hooded gaze, and so he awkwardly scrambles further up the bed with tangled legs.

Changkyun straddles his thighs and brings his hands to Minhyuk’s jawline, lifting his face to kiss him deep and good, like he wants and desires. Minhyuk manages to keep up with the fast pace, holds himself up with his arms stretched behind him while Changkyun’s freely travel up and down his clothed torso, and when Minhyuk finally feels how hard he’s already getting from just a makeout, lightly presses his hand to the other’s neck and moves away. Changkyun releases a tiny-tiny moan at the stimulation.

“Hey, slow down, you hungry hyena,” Minhyuk smiles, stealing a quick glance at the other’s wet lips and gently flushed cheeks. 

Changkyun sensibly ignores the choice of a pet name and and rests his hands on his shoulders. “You know how yesterday they asked if we were fucking?”

Minhyuk swallows, a light wave of excitement slithering down his stomach at the implication. “Yeah.”

“Well, I thought that if we really wanna have a comeback to that, we should at least actually fuck.” Changkyun takes a little look around the room, as if suddenly growing embarrassed, and if he weren’t already blushing because of the fervent makeout, he would totally be blushing now. “I sort of planned to do it today––thought we might, so I already got all cleaned and ready in the morning and stuff.” He tries to blurt out casually but his voice is low and quiet, and he looks at Minhyuk like he really needs an approval to his sexy shenanigans.

Minhyuk leans in and breathes against his lips, “You’re so hot,” covering his mouth immediately after. Changkyun gets lost in the soft but sensual makeout, and the bassist sits himself more comfortably and finally finds his hands where he’s been meaning to have them the past two days––on Changkyun’s plump little bum.

He massages and kneads on the flesh like he’s been touch-starved for months. Changkyun approves by humming into his mouth and tugging at his shirt. Minhyuk’s fingers creep under his t-shirt, slide over the soft but firm muscles of his stomach, expose his tattooed torso bit by bit, and Minhyuk breaks the kiss to remove the useless fabric with a lip bite. Changkyun hastily pulls Minhyuk’s shirt over his head and immediately attaches his lips to his long neck.

They start grinding against each other, clothed hard-ons brushing. Changkyun keens into every single movement, presses himself so tightly to the other guy their stomachs touch, and Minhyuk guides his hips over himself with hands glued to the rounded butt cheeks. 

His fingers crawl underneath the waistband of Changkyun’s jeans, sneak under the tight boxers and finally feel soft skin under his fingertips, and Minhyuk moans ecstatically. The other feels his erection strain against his jeans, grips it, making Minhyuk squirm, teases it idly with his fingers. 

“Pants off, come on, babe,” Changkyun mutters and slides off his thighs, plops his bum on the bed and disgracefully wiggles out of his jeans. Minhyuk hurries to undo his own zipper and tries to pull the fabric off his legs. He is so busy celebrating the release of his hard cock that he doesn’t immediately register Changkyun’s soft, marvelous, tattooed, naked thighs capturing his hips again. 

Minhyuk digs his blunt fingers into the flesh, scratches up to the hip bones, watches his muscles flex and ligaments bulge when he shortly jerks forward, and his dick bounces between his fit-fit legs. There are flowery patterns and thorns and chains encircling one thigh and animalistic scenarios on the other, and Minhyuk wants to tumble him on his back and kiss every inch of his skin. 

“Where’s lube?” But Changkyun has other plans.

“Drawer,” Minhyuk nods to the side, to which the other has the audacity to roll his eyes.

“Classic,” he snorts and climbs off Minhyuk, gets on all fours and crawls towards the end of the bed. Gets on all fours, butt magnificently out and exposed for Minhyuk only. His beautiful, beautiful butt with an ice cubes tattoo randomly planted on his right cheek. Minhyuk doesn’t fight the urge to slap it, and Changkyun only teasingly wiggles it in front of his face without even looking back at him.

Arse back on Minhyuk’s thighs, he carelessly drops a condom to the side and starts fiddling with a bottle of lube. “You like fingering?” Changkyun asks just in case, voice airy.

“Fuck yeah,” Minhyuk frowns like it’s obvious and snatches the bottle from the other’s hold. It doesn’t look like he’s going to get on all fours again for convenience, so Minhyuk just follows the basic course of actions and decides to improvise. 

“Don’t like doggy, wanna see your face,” Changkyun easily says and spreads his knees wider, wraps one hand around the base of his dick and just stands there with his magnificent bare body over Minhyuk’s thighs, matter-of-factly.

Minhyuk coats the fingers of his right hand, wiggles them a little in front of Changkyun’s face and reaches between his legs. Treasure-hunting. Changkyun spreads one butt cheek with his free hand, and Minhyuk drags his slick fingers over the crack until he finds his clean puckered rim and presses right on it. Changkyun looks impatient, gaze hardening with each second Minhyuk takes to vainly tease him, grips his cock just a tad harder. 

One slim fingertip finally pushes through, and Changkyun exhales with relief, pleased to finally have something up his arse. He is relaxed and takes it easy, probably fucked himself just the night before, and Minhyuk pushes in to the second knuckle, where his fingers are wider and harder to fit in. They aren’t in the best position but Minhyuk does all he can to start moving, presses against the walls, curls inward to find the sensitive spot.

“Come on babe, get a wee bit of bravery,” Changkyun teases, gently moving his hips into the intrusion in his hole, and Minhyuk only clicks his tongue and abruptly leans in to bite on a pierced nipple. Changkyun ouches. 

But he does as he’s told, fits the second finger in, slowly moves inside and suddenly realises that he’s about to fuck this obnoxious short tattooed punk he has an undeniable crush on. But fuck it if Changkyun isn’t the prettiest little bastard on campus.

“Oh, yeah, come on baby, deeper,” he breathes out when Minhyuk barely brushes past the spot, and when he does press hardly and confidently, shudders and moans. “Fuck, yeah.”

The quicker he gets, the wetter the sounds and the rougher Changkyun moves, the harder he bites on his bottom lip, the harsher he scratches Minhyuk’s shoulder and the louder he swears. Minhyuk stably fucks him with three fingers and nuzzles into the other’s neck, smiling. “Did you know that the only time I don’t blabber my life away is during sex?”

Changkyun grunts, struggling to move his hips in time with the short thrusts that start to get slower. “I’ll talk for both of us,” and then he releases a prolonged hum when Minhyuk starts nibbling and biting on the side of his neck, with ambiguously pure intentions to leave even more marks. 

Then Minhyuk abruptly speeds up, shoving his hand at an awkward angle and still filling Changkyun well and rough, and the other’s moan gets stuck in his throat. “Fuck me,” his eyes have long squeezed shut but his tongue definitely doesn’t seem to stop any time soon. “Fuck me, babe, come on, I want your dick,” he airily blabbers through a dazed cloud of pleasure, and Minhyuk bites on his collarbone. 

“Did you know I have a name?”

Changkyun _whines_, straight up whines and bounces on the slowed down fingers like a capricious brat. “Shut up, Minhyuk, it’s fuck time, fuck me already.”

Minhyuk looks up at him. He’s a master of hiding his nasty intentions under the expression of faux innocence, and he blinks at the other with rounded sinless eyes and pouts. “What was it?” His fingers freeze.

Changkyun breathes out with a tortured smile. Sweat gathers on his forehead. “Actually fuck off,” he glances to the side and bites on his lower lip when he brushes his thumb over the enraged red tip of his cock. 

“Am I fucking off or doing something else?” Minhyuk makes a move to pull his fingers out, and Changkyun shakes his shoulders in a way that makes him seem like he’s stomping his foot on the floor.

“Stop the teasing, just fuck me,” he curves his eyebrows, look of plea in his eyes. Minhyuk can’t hold it in anymore, finally seeing the tough punk facade crumbling, and drops his head on the other’s damp chest.

“I’m kidding, ‘course I will.” He carefully removes his fingers and then leaves a light wet slap on the plump butt cheek. “You into that?” He asks in case.

“Fuck yeah,” Changkyun breathes out and grabs the condom square, rips it with his teeth and tosses the wrap away, acting quick while Minhyuk just finished wiping his hand on Changkyun’s hip. He takes the matter into his own hands and eagerly pulls the condom on Minhyuk’s proudly standing cock. The minimum Minhyuk can do is at least spread more lube over it.

But Changkyun barely has any patience to wait any longer, shuffles around to put his feet on the bed and squats, grabs Minhyuk’s dick and leads it to his hole, planting himself right on. He is still wearing his ridiculous puppy socks.

“Fuck,” they exhale at the same time as heat envelopes them both. Changkyun stretches his arms behind himself and leans back, opening one magnificent view for Minhyuk to marvel. Although the other’s thighs cover most of it, he can see the way his cock disappears in his hole, the way Changkyun’s own organ bounces with every speeding squat, the way his stomach rolls just slightly and distorts the inked image around his navel. 

Minhyuk starts fucking into him with incredible vigour. Changkyun sits on him with every thrust, moans out breathy ‘yeah’s and ‘fuck’s, gets high on warm fullness and little hisses that slip past Minhyuk’s lips. Then he rocks his hips forward in restricted wavy motions, tries to reach for it, helps the other find the spot with his dick, and when they do, moans so deep in his throat it’s like he’s been hiding his voice for many-many years.

His muscles slowly give out, so he sinks down fully and straightens his legs, hooking his ankles around Minhyuk waist. At least this way he can finally busy his hands with squeezing and slapping the little cupcake bum. 

Changkyun grinds in short rough movement, enjoying every little spark of pleasure, and Minhyuk gets off on the slick sounds and smacks of skin against skin and hurried movements and pleasing flesh under his palms. They kiss again, hot and wet and constantly disrupted by broken sounds of pleasure, but it’s good, it’s theirs, it means they really fucking love it.

When the shorter guy starts moving less and less, obviously tired, Minhyuk turns them around without pulling out and traps Changkyun’s head between his arms. He fucks him quick and strong, chasing his own inevitable pleasure until his nerves blow up and he wants to cry from sensitivity. Changkyun’s heels dig into his lower back, hitting him with every powerful thrust, his entire petit and yet firm body rubbing on the sheets, hair sprayed all over the pillow. 

“Fuck, baby, yeah, harder,” Changkyun mutters deliriously and flinches from side to side, his dangly earring scratching the pillow with him, overwhelmed with fullness and yet frustrated that he’s not being stimulated enough.

Minhyuk grunts when he feels it coming, when he starts to lose his rhythm, and so he stops for just a brief second, flings one of Changkyun’s legs over his head and the other over his own shoulder, raising his arse in the air, stretching him as much as his incredible flexibility allows him to. And Minhyuk aims, fucks into him with the last drops of his energy, and Changkyun moans, short and harsh without much air in his lungs, weakly touches his cock and shudders.

With a religious mantra of ‘fuck fuck fuck fuck’ he cums all over the drawings on his stomach in thick ropes, some of it reaching up his chest and chin by enertion from Minhyuk’s movements. Changkyun clenches around him with the force of his orgasm, and Minhyuk stutters, squeezes something within him and lets it go, gasps and cums mid-thrust, milks himself through it with gentle languid movements. 

All that’s left of them is a mix of raspy breaths and the smell of sweat and sex. Minhyuk carefully pulls out and lowers himself with his shaky arms right into the crook of Changkyun’s neck, nuzzling it. Clammy hands come to hug him around his back, and Minhyuk realises this was a mistake when he feels hot cum stick to his chest. 

“Shower or nah?” Is the first thing Changkyun asks, exhaustion still traceable in his voice.

Minhyuk hums and tries to cuddle in closer. “It’s my home so I can go whenev––” he yawns, loud and sweet and so satisfactory. Changkyun hugs him a little tighter and rubs himself on him. Cum smears all over their torsos. 

“You’re such a little bastard, did you know that?”

Changkyun releases a sound between a victorious giggle and a sarcastic chuckle. “You like it.”

Minhyuk wants to fight him but knows he can’t exactly deny the truth. He gets up when he feels a little more strength in his arms and properly looks at the other from above for the first time. “You’re so cliché,” he says with a smile and climbs out of bed to throw away the condom and gets them something to clean the mess. “I’ll go get wet towels.” He spares a glance at Changkyun’s still spread legs and mentally pats himself on the back. The little bastard is a treasure, he has to admit. 

On the way to the entrance door, they encounter a very pale Hyungwon who carefully looks away from the TV in their living room and offers a basic polite smile. Changkyun happily marches to put on his massive trainers and Minhyuk musters an apologetic grimace, mouthing a ‘did you hear?’ with a painfully sorry curve of his eyebrows. Hyungwon slowly nods in reply and shoves a crisp into his mouth.

Some other next day, they proudly stroll into that practice room to announce to their friends that they are, in fact, fucking.

Minhyuk’s always believed that third time’s the charm. They seemed to be getting on well for a couple of days with the newfound status of ‘fucking—Minhyuk appears in Changkyun’s stories every day, they matched their niche fashion items to post a collection of aesthetic grainy pictures in their accounts, they have a little night out alone to drink wine in the park and take some basic polaroid shots, and it’s all quite nice and sweet, but as it always goes in the end, it’s never enough.

Changkyun’s back in his bedroom, leaving traces of himself not only during sex but also after. Somehow it doesn’t seem weird that when they’re already half-dressed in the same jeans they’ve been wearing the whole day and content with a much needed dose of nicotine, the next thing they do is continue slamming down the strings on their guitar and not cuddling. 

Changkyun finishes the final chord with a headbang. “Told you ‘Lithium’ is better!” He tortures Minhyuk’s electric baby like it’s his own, starts on a new tune and bops his head to it, all while the bassist has long given up fighting and collapsed in his messy bed that still smells of sex and something inherently masculine. Probably Changkyun’s sweaty back. 

And yet Minhyuk likes that, likes to think that the other guy’s presence is imprinted in a strange physical manifestation. He’s terribly whipped. “Come here.” He calls. 

The other swings the guitar over his shoulder and pretends to think. “Tell me I’m right.”

Minhyuk rolls his eyes. “All I asked for was cuddles.”

“Tell me I’m right to choose ‘Lithium’ and I’ll think about it.”

Sometimes there are moments when he has to give in. Especially if it’s Changkyun being hyped on adrenaline and music and even affection, just a tiny bit. “You are right, very right,” he states, barely any sincerity in his voice but a tiny smile still stuck to his lips like a curse. “Now come here.”

Changkyun clicks his tongue, puts the guitar back on its stand and climbs onto the bed. Minhyuk spreads his arms wide and welcomes the other into his embrace with a smile that’s probably a bit too sappy for their image. Changkyun captures his thighs between his knees and leans down to nuzzle into his neck, and Minhyuk can feel a smile from the way the other’s mouth touches his skin and his cheeks puff up. 

“By the way, I talked to the guys when you weren’t there, and they said you’re more than welcome to stay in the band.”

Surprised, Changkyun raises his head. “For real?” Minhyuk nods. “But we haven’t even performed yet, and the OG frontman is coming back anyways.”

Minhyuk shrugs. “Well, you’re a good addition.”

“That’s cool, actually,” Changkyun absently twirls a strand of Minhyuk’s hair between his fingers, “being just an Instagram tattoo model was getting kinda lame.” He sets more comfortably over the other’s legs and distractedly caresses his bare chest.

“You’re not lame,” Minhyuk protests lazily and pokes the shell of his ear. Changkyun offers that cute polite smile that forces his dimplets out. Minhyuk stares at him, stares at him intensely, thinks and thinks while the other draws vague invisible shapes on his skin. “Are we dating?”

All the cute front crumbles to dust as Changkyun looks up and quirks his pierced eyebrow. “Well, I didn’t think that far.”

Minhyuk clicks his tongue and gasps in offense. “We literally fucked,” he says with complaint in his voice and tries not to let undetermined disappointment get to him. “Three times. And you like me.” He adds a bit quieter, looking down. 

Changkyun hums, obviously not taking the situation seriously. “Aren’t we supposed to be, like, seeing each other first, see if we like going on dates and only then make it official?”

Minhyuk clicks his tongue in real disappointment now, but the air around them is still light, like the whole conversation is just one lame banter. He knows it is, but he really wants it declared properly.

“Skip that, we can go straight to dating.” He reasons, a little whiny.

“Guess we can?” Changkyun pouts in suggestion, and Minhyuk lightly slaps his shoulder. 

“Oi! Say it properly!” He scolds, but a smile grows on his face nevertheless.

Changkyun whines like an awkward teenager, lips quivering in a smile to conceal his embarrassment. “Guess we can date.”

Minhyuk’s head falls back on the pillow, and he howls. “Changkyun,” he groans, “come o-o-o-on.”

Apparently, as Minhyuk found out, what Changkyun needs to get his shit together is a safe manifestation of physical strength, and he’s back to being cheeky and sexy and, well, kind of cool. He slams his fist against the soft sheets and sharply inhales.

“Ah, fuck it,” he leans in abruptly and kisses Minhyuk, kisses him briefly but sincerely, just the way he likes it—savouring his lips and exchanging sentimentalities more than sensualities. “Date me,” he whispers into his mouth. Minhyuk suddenly grows hot in his cheeks and he bites on the inside of his lips as an awkward smile threatens to stain his features. He’s supposed to be the adult in their relationship.

“Okay,” he quietly says back and allows himself to smile properly, all teeth and gums on display and eyes sparkling with unveiled happiness. He swallows Changkyun in a tight-tight hug and squeals into his neck.

Changkyun’s shout is muffled by his skin as they tumble into the sheets and almost suffocate in each other’s hold. Well, Minhyuk’s hold, mainly. “No-o-o-o, I’m supposed to go meet my friends,” the other whines, trying to get out. 

Minhyuk gives zero fucks about some friends and drops them to their sides, pressing them so-so close to each other it’s like their skin merges at the chests. He flings one leg over his hips and tangles the other with Changkyun’s. All that’s left of their corporal forms is one big mix of tattoos and black jeans. 

There’s a bit more grumbling coming from the other guy before he just gives up and relaxes. Relaxes for one good wholesome minute before he starts wiggling around again. “I’ll be late.”

Putting only a slight distance between them, Minhyuk smiles gleefully at him. “Tell them it's your boyfriend's fault,” and then proceeds to choke him in a loving hug again. 

Changkyun does manage to scramble out of the death hold, but he has enough common sense to smile cheekily like he always does and leave a gentle kiss on Minhyuk’s lips. He notices how naturally it really comes to them, being together. 

Minhyuk keeps lying in bed as he watches his _boyfriend_ get dressed and ready, head propped against his hand. He’s wearing a long black striped shirt today and a collection of emo chains from Accessorize. Changkyun throws his backpack over one shoulder and nods him a see you later with his brows. “Bye, babe,” and grins, of course he grins. 

“See you tomorrow, practice at three.” Minhyuk reminds him and blows him an air kiss. 

The other pretends to catch it with his mouth. “I’ll text you when I’m in uni, might grab lunch together or something.”

Something in Minhyuk’s chest squirms at the knowledge that his man is much more considerate than he lets on. “Bye, sexy,” he flirts for no reason whatsoever. 

Changkyun scrunches his nose in mock endearment and opens the door. “Don’t forget to tell your friends,” he teasingly whispers and wiggles his eyebrows, and more than anything, Minhyuk just wants to throw a pillow into his face. 

When did his life manage to turn into one dumb romcon, he doesn’t know, but he likes to think he deserved it. 

“So fucking loud. I hadn’t even manage to take my shoes off when I hear literally the longest guttural moan ever—oi, shush, my turn to talk, I deserve to winge. I don’t understand why we haven’t established a rule about bringing one-night stands into the house?—hello, I’m just expressing my opinion? No, K-k-ki doesn’t count, he’s family. Changkyun, on the other hand—oh, my god, did you know he stole my snacks? I had three, I remember it really well, I had three packs of Doritos, but when I come home the next day I only find two. You know, I’m a kind, open-minded guy, but please tell Changkyun not to steal my snacks, I work really-really hard to get them.” Hyungwon sighs and pitifully bites into his burrito, finally taking his second bite of the day. 

“I never complain when Kihyun sorts out my laundry in the wrong piles, why are you complaining about my boyfriend?” Minhyuk whines through a mush of meat and dough in his mouth, offended beyond belief. 

“Kihyun does your laundry?” Hyungwon asks, disbelief obvious in his eyes like stars in the night sky. 

“Yeah, sometimes,” Minhyuk replies like it’s obvious. 

“He never does mine,” Hyungwon mutters and stares at his burrito, sad realisation painted on his features. 

“Make Changkyun pay for stealing your Doritos by giving him your laundry,” Jooheon suggests. 

“What’s he gonna do with it? Burn it?”

Jooheon sadly bites into his taco, unwillingly agreeing. 

“Boys, boys, it’s my boyfriend we’re talking about,” Minhyuk tries to protest and shoves a handful of nachos into his mouth. 

“You’ve been dating for a day,” Hoseok notices. 

“Oi, don’t be salty,” Minhyuk retaliates. “Two days, actually.”

Jooheon claps his hands and smiles passive-aggressively, absolutely out of nowhere and for no reason whatsoever, as always. “Festival is in five days,” he announces. 

“Ah, shit,” Hoseok comments. 

“Well, fuck,” Hyungwon adds. 

“I know what I’m doing,” Minhyuk says proudly, cheerfully munching his burrito. 

“Lithium is such a weird choice.” Jooheon licks the sauce that dripped down his hand. 

“But it works so well.” Minhyuk leans on the table, “We have chemistry, mate, we’re gonna be spectacular.” For a moment, he looks as promising of himself as Gatsby from the film, and the rest know it’s better to just let him be. 

“Well, even if you screw up,” Hoseok takes a bite and smiles with his puffy cheeks, “at least you’ll be together.”

The rest of the gang can only smile and assure Hoseok they believe him with their whole hearts.

One day before the festival, Changkyun decides to stay overnight at Minhyuk’s for the first time. Time spent together was much sweeter than Hyungwon would like to give them credit for. 

“You not scared? About tomorrow?” Minhyuk asks and continues staring at the ceiling like before. His arm is stretched across the pillows to accommodate Changkyun’s head on it. 

“No,” Changkyun honestly replies, looking for stars on Minhyuk’s ceiling. “Well, a wee bit nervous, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“Are you not scared of anything at all?” It’s comfortingly dark and warm, and so Minhyuk considers it a good atmosphere to chat about something metaphysical before sleep. 

“Not really. You?”

Pouting, Minhyuk hums. “Just basic stuff, really. Sharks, losing a loved one, not achieving anything in life, encountering a psychopath in a dark alley on the way home from the club in the middle of the night, all that stuff.” 

Changkyn breathes out a silent laugh. “That’s why you take a taxi.”

Minhyuk turns to look at him, a free hand coming to rest on the small tattooed chest, right over a big bush of gothic flowers. “How do you manage to get all these tattoos? It’s not like your student loan actually pays for all of them.”

The other looks down at himself too, chin squishing into his neck. “Well,” he starts, “I did have a job or two. I helped around my friend’s tattoo studio a lot, and then let him practice on me back when he was just starting. He corrected them all for free then, it’s kind of their policy. Here,” he raises his left arm and points at a ring of thorns and droplets of blood wrapping around his forearm. Minhyuk can’t see well but he puts his head on his chest and focuses on the vague silhouette. “There used to be roses and some random plants––done like shit, honestly––and then his friend fixed it. I’m here on a scholarship, you know, so no one wastes any money on me. As soon as I save up I just get tats. But to be, like, really honest, my friend just gives me a massive discount.” Changkyun chuckles, and Minhyuk clicks his tongue.

“Hyunwoo is one of my best friends and he never tattooed me for free,” he complains.

“You don’t have as much as me,” Changkyun notices, side-eyeing Minhyuk’s inked pecs and sleeves that peak from under the blanket. He’s got a lot of clean space, more random drawings scattered all over his skin than unfolded scenarios like on the other guy’s body.

“You just have more than me,” Minhyuk retaliates. “I just like giving them meaning.”

“Don’t think it always matters.” Changkyun takes a few seconds to think. “It’s just that… the process relaxes me. It’s almost the only time in my life when I can just turn off all my functions and not think about anything for several hours. It’s like the world is finally focused on just one thing, and that one thing is the buzz of the machine and that pleasing ache that you can’t wait to come back to.”

Poetic, Minhyuk thinks. Hyungwon would be jealous. “What do you think about?”

“Everything, really. Life, people, universe. Not anything that makes me worry, but rather things that make me wonder.” They’re still recklessly looking for stars on Minhyuk’s plain white ceiling.

“You ever worry about anything?”

Changkyun hums. “Recently what mainly worries me is how to be a decent boyfriend for you, like, you know, how to make you happy and stuff.” Minhyuk’s heart starts squirming in his chest immediately, and the corners of his mouth automatically spread in a grimace of endearment and shyness. “Maybe we can go on more original dates after the whole festival thing is over.”

Minhyuk think he’ll never get over the fact that Changkyun is so much more considerate than he lets on. He hasn’t even gotten used to calling him a boyfriend yet. “That would be nice for sure.”

With a big yawn Changkyun turns around and flings his arm over Minhyuk’s waist. “Let’s sleep, babe.” Minhyuk knows it’s just his way of getting out of sappy conversations, but he lets him nuzzle his chest and hugs the other guy tighter, warmer, safer.

“Alright, night, cutie.”

Changkyun bites on the area just above his nipple. Minhyuk gasps in grand offense and kicks him in the knackers. “Night.”

His boyfriend is still such a cheeky little punk, but Minhyuk pecks the crown of his head anyways.

The lights hit them blind, drowning the entire park in the dark. The crowd politely cheers, but what deafens them is the scream of amplifier in the earpiece. Every breath is like thunder, loud and clear in the pouches of massive speakers. Up on the stage, the air is fresh and green, no stains of beer, no cigarette smoke, no unshowered hippies. Up on the stage, there is music and thrill. 

Up on the stage, there is Jooheon, Hyungwon, Minhyuk and Changkyun standing in their positions, about to perform their original song to the crowd of mildly drunk and high university students and other frequent visitors of the park. 

Well, all the great people started somewhere.

Jooheon taps his drumsticks together, one, two, three, microphone check, sound check, confidence check. Once ready, he taps the drumsticks again, louder, stronger, one, two, three, comes the snare drum, built-up anticipation, one, one, one, one, hysterical cymbals, drunken bass, a bloodline of toms, one, two, one, two, one, two, one and two and three and four, cue the lead guitar, bent string falsetto and—

“We are! Rocksta! X!” Changkyun growls into the standing microphone and headbangs against electrolysed air with a new hit of the drums. 

GMD was put first as a warm-up, as a demo version of their abilities for the audience to get accustomed to, to judge if they wish, and for Changkyun and Minhyuk to prepare their vocal chords for the madness to come. The short punk sings the parts that need power and fury, and Minhyuk helps him balance it out with soft raspy notes of his own. Jooheon’s beat is chill until the chorus drops, Changkyun chaotically strums the rhythm while Hyungwon calmly shows off and thinks he’s so cool bopping his head to his own music.

The crowd seems to like their energy, slowly warm-up to their sound and definitely appreciate the little visual bonus of, well, their faces. Changkyun doesn’t seem to care a single bit about his image, he sticks out his tongue and makes out with the mic, so it’s Minhyuk and Hyungwon’s job to make sure the performance is at least somehow visually pleasing. Well, to Minhyuk, every dumb face Changkyun makes is incredibly hot anyways.

What the faceless crowd seems to appreciate the most though, is not the music, not the vocals, not the hype, but the way Minhyuk bumps his back into Changkyun’s and rubs against him, hips swaying and faces ecstatic as they sing into the same mic together. 

_Baby give me dat_, comes Changkyun’s growl in Gothic Bold.  
_Baby give me that_, echoes Minhyuk’s sweet cursive Pacifico.  
_Please don’t go away_, Changkyun aggressively orders.  
_Please don’t go away_, Minhyuk romantically pleads. 

They finish the song with Jooheon’s passionate slam and take a second to breathe. Cheers and claps put a little smile on their faces, and while they’re setting the instruments for the next song, Changkyun’s fingers wrap around the microphone again, guitar discarded and earpiece dangling around his neck.

“Hi, Green Park,” Changkyun chuckles quietly like a villain, high on adrenaline. “Clap your hands to the beat if you know the song,” he says and looks over at the rest of the gang. The trio nods. Jooheon starts a gentle tapping, warning the band. When he stops, Minhyuk takes over and plays a simple tune on the bass as a preview. Someone cheers in the crowd. Hyungwon takes a gulp of water, having nothing to do for the first half of the song. Jooheon and Minhyuk join in together, playing the intro beat. 

“Aye, let’s go!” Changkyun starts and shuffles around in surprisingly smooth disco movements. He wiggles around Minhyuk, whose bass grows louder and louder, accompanying but not hiding the singer’s voice. “_Another one bites the dust_,” he joins in for a couple of lines, harmonising perfectly it’s almost like Changkyun’s voice just got split into higher and lower octaves. 

Hyungwon finally has the chance to bend a couple of strings, and Changkyun goes crazy, twitches his shoulders and taps to one, two, three, four, clap clap, one and two, and one and two, and one and two, and one clap-clap.

“Ow!” Minhyuk adds to Changkyun’s mindless grooving. 

“Hey, I’m gonna get you too, another one bites the dust!” The frontman rasps and teeths on his bottom lip, tilting his head back to expose his glistening neck and the sharp angle of his jawline. Such a show off, Minhyuk smiles to himself and finishes the song to Jooheon’s final combo.

The cheers are louder this time, encouraging, approving. The band’s united heartbeat increases with each second, anticipation building up from the mere preparation to the final song.

Changkyun exhales into the mic. “Make,” he growls quietly, “some,” he says threateningly and inhales, “NOISE!” He shouts, and the crowd listens, and listens so well. Hyped screams fly into the stuffy air there and there, and someone in the front even stomps their feet.

All eyes of the band are on Hyungwon. Exchange of nods. His fingers are back on Richard, pressing. 

The first five second are enough to spark recognition in the audience, and when Jooheon joins and Changkyun starts on ‘Lithium’, they are not singing alone. It’s pleasing to know Nirvana is not niche in their modern milieu just yet. 

It goes seemingly controlled until the last line of the verse. “Light my candles in a daze ‘cause I found God,” and when he inhales, the song drops onto their heads like a meteorite, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” He growls, tearing his throat apart, and Minhyuk echoes his deep recklessness with a high croak of his own, and Jooheon slams the drums like it’s his last day on Earth, and Hyungwon’s head is barely hanging on the thin bones of his neck.

Minhyuk pants and think it requires immense lungs and talentry to be able to hold a bloody ‘yeah’ for so long.

For the second verse, Changkyun is suddenly back to normal. It only lasts half a minute, and when the next portion of ‘yeah’s drops, the whole stage is shaking. The chaos carries into the bridge, into painfully hoarse ‘I like it, I’m not gonna crack, I miss you, I’m not gonna crack,’ into Changkyun kicking the mic stand and stomping his foot like he’s got a stomach ache. 

Minhyuk shakes his head from side to side, dark bangs stuck to his forehead and fingers moving on their own accord. Jooheon barely sees where he’s drumming with sweat dripping down his face, and tiny drops of water bounce up from the drums and sparkle in the white stagelight with every hit he delivers. Hyungwon has long lost his balance and is playing without noticing where he is or what he’s doing. He is so skilled and high he can fling his guitar over the shoulder and play blindly with his elbows in the air. 

One last note resounds in the air like thunder, and all four boys pant, frozen in the light of the stage, in the last light of glory and applause. The crowd cheers excitedly for them when they gather upfront and bow, guitars and drumsticks raised and dazzling smiles on their wet faces. All they hear is the roar of the music that’s still pumping in their veins.

As soon as they run off backstage, they bump into a big, messy hug. 

“We did so well, guys!” Minhyuk squeals, jumping with Changkyun’s and Jooheon’s arms on his back. 

“This was amazing,” Jooheon breathes out like he’s just sprinted a marathon across the country and not played a ten-minute music set.

“Can’t feel my hands,” Hyungwon mumbles but his smile is bright and tired, satisfied. Jooheon ruffles his hair.

“Rocksta X rocks.” Jooheon concludes and pats them all on the back, stepping away to find a bottle of water and a towel. The next group is already going up on the stage. 

Minhyuk looks at Changkyun, smile never leaving his lips. The shorter beams, adrenaline and excitement still burning in his black eyes, but his smile is soft, almost strangely hopeful. Minhyuk doesn’t hold it in anymore and engulfs him in a tight-tight hug.

“You were so good,” he whispers into Changkyun’s cheek and presses the other into himself even more.

Changkyun breathes out a laugh at his boyfriend’s spill of affection. “Thank you,” he whispers into his neck, “you were amazing too.” His hands close behind Minhyuk’s back, and they stay like that in each other’s arms until an irritatingly sweet ‘aww’ ruins the moment. 

“You guys are so cute,” a very familiar voice calls from the side.

Minhyuk jumps away from his boyfriend with wide eyes. “Kihyun!” He squeaks, reaching the approaching vocalist in two jumps and swallowing him in his arms. “Didn’t know you’re back?”

Kihyun chuckles, patting Minhyuk on the back and putting a distance between them. “I came back today, thought I’d sacrifice my grandma’s goodbye pudding for your performance.”

“Hey, Ki,” Hyungwon softly calls and steals all of the other guy’s attention away. They reunite affectionately while Minhyuk grimaces in disgust.

“Bleh, romance.”

Changkyun comes to stand next to him, waiting for his turn to say his actual official greeting to the original frontman of the band.

“Hi, Changkyun!” Kihyun dumbly exclaims like he sees the other for the first time and reaches into a light bro-pat hug. “You were incredible today, I knew I was right to recommend you.”

Changkyun smiles shyly, so shyly it doesn’t even look like Changkyun who was begging to get praised just the night before in Minhyuk’s bedroom, and a weak sting of jealousy creeps up the bassist stomach at the way his boyfriend beams at his best friend’s boyfriend.

“We actually briefly discussed it with the guys over text, they were all really satisfied with your––”

“Don’t say diligence,” Hyungwon interrupts.

“And definitely not attitude,” Minhyuk adds.

“And maybe not creativity, I’m still the leader,” Jooheon cuts in.

“Talent.” Kihyun continues like before. The rest of the gang decides it fair enough. Changkyun is helplessly blinking at him. “What I’m saying is, you’re welcome to become an official part of the band, be the subvocal and the rhythm guitarist.” Before Kihyun can even finish, Minhyuk gasps and turns to look at his boyfriend with eyes so painfully emotional. 

“Yes!” He shouts and jumps on Changkyun with another suffocating hug, making the shorter tumble back with the strength of his affection. When Minhyuk lets go, his face is glowing with happiness, unconcealed excitement and pride for the guy he’s only been dating for a week. He thinks the time doesn’t matter when Changkyun beams up at him with the same amount of joy in his irises. 

“Come on, lovebirds, we have celebration shots to take.” Jooheon calls as Hyungwon zips up his guitar case and Kihyun helps with Minhyuk’s bass. 

Minhyuk just strokes over his boyfriend’s hair and silently tells him something intimately affectionate with his eyes. 

This is so ridiculously sappy but he thinks that he wouldn’t mind tattooing this very moment on his skin to remember it forever.

“I’m not even that short. Listen, I don’t care if you call me cute, you’re gonna traumatise me with your teasing to the point I’ll start wearing platform heels, and trust me, I’m really good at stomping people’s faces if I need to. It’s just my fashion, it’s not my fault black looks so good on me. Hyungwon’s never worn a single bright thing over the weeks I’ve known him, but you only keep on teasing me, can you move on already? My brother told me not to get a piercing because my nose is so big but look at me, I look amazing with it. Mm, the tuna ones are really good. Sho! I wiw no’ cho’erate cheazhing hrom, wait, I will not tolerate teasing from someone who literally cries over how cool my tats are. Man, the tuna ones are amazing, I’ll Deliveroo from this place for sure,” Changkyun swallows a maki roll and stuffs another straight after. 

Minhyuk stares at him pitifully. “You’re so full of shit,” he sighs sadly and stuff his face with ramen noodles.

“You love me,” Changkyun retorts, scanning the table in case anyone’s left a piece of their sushi.

“It’s more like I love the little wolfie on your back.” Minhyuk keeps his expression melancholic for the sake of delivering his tragic story better. “His name is Danny, he is great grey wolf and he smiles when I kiss him goodnight.”

“Gross,” Jooheon cuts in and tries to fit a whole hand roll into his mouth. 

“You guys are dedicating songs to each other,” Hyungwon says, contemplating between his unfinished sashimi and starting on his shrimp tempura. He takes a bite of the second and stares into nothingness, lifeless. “Kihyun’s never dedicated me a song.”

“I miss Ki, why’s he back in Scotland anyway?” Minhyuk asks, and Changkyun’s hand comes to wrap around his shoulders. 

“His nan got upset he never tried that pudding he rejected that one time,” Jooheon explains. “Must have been a good pudding.”

“Maybe we should ask him to bring us some back,” Minhyuk offers. 

Changkyun loudly smacks around the last piece of fish in his mouth and swallows with an expression that means he’s about to say something unpleasant. “Why are y’all talking about Kihyun? Thought we were supposed to bitch about me.”

“How are you relevant?” Jooheon curves his eyebrows in question. 

“For keeping the comedy going?” Changkyun replies like it’s bloody obvious. 

Hyungwon twitches his lips downwards, agreeing. “Fairs.”

“Anyways!” Minhyuk exclaims and raises his glass of beer into the air. “To Rocksta X!”

The rest of the gang copy and blandly cheer. “To Rocksta X.”

Minhyuk turns to look at his boyfriend, expression immediately growing soft. “And you, thanks for falling on me from the sky nose-first into my nerves.” He smiles and lightly clinks his glass with Changkyun’s.

The other keep an eye contact going, eyes forcefully amused for the sake of hiding that explosive energy of anger within. “Babe, keep saying such sappy things and I’ll tattoo your fucking face on my leg.”

Minhyuk crinkles his nose is fake endearment. “Gladly.” 

They take a sip of their respective beers and suddenly snort into the glasses. Changkyun gives his boyfriend a pat on the back. “I love you, don’t worry.”

Minhyuk smiles sweetly, and replies with, “I know.”

Changkyun drops his head on the table with a hollow thud.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed and thank you for reading!! any feedback is appreciated)
> 
> hmu on twt [chaeleggiewon](https://twitter.com/chaeleggiewon)  
i scream about the lack of changhyuk daily


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